LAKEWOOD, Ohio — As teachers, we think about some of the students we’ve had in our classes and wonder what happened to them. After watching the junior senator from Ohio these past few months, I was reminded of a young man I taught nearly 50 years ago.

In this class, we read the novel All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. The Vietnam War was only a few years removed, and students had intense conversations about the effects of war and the suffering of a young teenage soldier in World War I. A student and I had a long conversation about a point in history. This student was of average height, with long brown hair, as befits the time, deep blue eyes on a battered face, and he was smart, very smart. He periodically chose to argue his point with lengthy comments.

During our class that afternoon, his classmates were not enamored of his oratory skills and groaned when he continued. He did not back down from his argument that the Western Front was not really in the west but should have been called the east. After almost a semester with him, she had a pattern of arguing over incidental issues and never backed down.

Once or twice over the years, I’ve thought about him and wondered if he became a lawyer. My fleeting memory of him was rekindled when Senator JD Vance became the former president’s running mate. Vance has similar characteristics to my young student. But unfortunately, the senator is transparent in his other behaviors. Sure he’s erudite, a hard worker, and likes to be thought of as an outsider, but he’s a wounded soul. I look at him and see him as a child, desperately trying to overcome the disadvantages of his early life, seeking acceptance and recognition, knowing that when he was a child, he was “the other.”

Every kid wants to belong and I suspect he didn’t. That hurt may have been softened in the Marines, or Ohio State University, or Yale, but the vestiges are still there in his speech, his arguments, and his denigration of people he considers others. He upholds Christian beliefs, but misses a few principles, such as “love your neighbor as yourself.” He tells blatant lies against the Haitian community in Springfield and publicly admits the lies “to hold the media accountable,” but makes no apologies for his behavior. He does not accept the damage he and his fellow candidate have caused in that community. Just last week, Vance described his view on removing immigrants from the nation and used the phrase “maximizing compassion through mass deportation.” The cruelty of this phrase is astounding.

Will Senator Vance demonstrate kindness and goodness to protect all the “others” in our country — all those marginalized souls, including immigrants, the sick, the elderly, the homeless, crime victims, the poor, and all children? If “the child is the man’s father”, we might expect him to remember when he was the other, but he has shown no capacity for empathy, and that is really upsetting.

Kathleen T. Neal is a 40-year retired educator who spent five years as Superintendent of Springfield City Schools in Clark County (1994-1999).

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